Gugu's rapid ride to fame and fortune

GUGU Mtshali's giant leap from office worker to the boardroom has generated repeated scandals.

Mtshali, Deputy President Kgalema Motlanthe's partner, started making business deals while working full time as a personal assistant at ANC HQ, Luthuli House, while Motlanthe was the party's secretary-general.

Mtshali, now 48, is the daughter of a retired truck driver. She started working at Luthuli House as a PA to Cyril Ramaphosa when he was the secretary-general of the ANC in 1991.

Mtshali, who was married to Kagiso Media company secretary Dumisani Mtshali, left Luthuli House to give birth to her only child, a boy, in 1994. She returned and worked as a PA to former ANC treasurer Mendi Msimang.

It was while working for Msimang that she became a director of various companies. One was Vuna Coal Holdings, where Andrew Hendricks, husband of Lindiwe Hendricks (minister of water affairs during Motlanthe's tenure as president of South Africa), was also a director.

Vuna Coal Holdings was a subsidiary of Vuna Mining Enterprises, which was taken to court for an alleged conflict of interest over prospecting mining rights.

Vuna Mining was awarded the rights in 2005 while Lindiwe Hendricks was minister of minerals and energy and her husband was one of the directors. The minister herself previously held shares in Vuna Mining.

Although it is not clear when Mtshali and Motlanthe started dating, she divorced her husband of 17 years in December 2008.

Meanwhile, Motlanthe, who had been estranged from his wife, Mapula Motlanthe, a former radiographer at Leratong Hospital in Mogale City, for many years, finally separated from her after Mtshali's divorce. Motlanthe has three children with his former wife.

Motlanthe served as president from September 25 2008 to May 9 2009 after Thabo Mbeki was removed by the ANC.

In September 2009, Mtshali left Luthuli House, where she was a PA to Mathews Phosa, the current ANC treasurer, to concentrate on her business ventures. She was embroiled in another scandal in 2010, a multibillion-rand business deal which also involves President Jacob Zuma's son, Duduzane.

She is one of the co-founders and shareholders of Imperial Crown Trading (ICT), a company that, in November 2009, was controversially awarded prospecting rights worth billions of rands to the Sishen mine by the Department of Mineral Resources.

Kumba, which submitted an application for those rights on the same day, claimed ICT were granted those rights only because of fraud committed inside the Department of Mineral Resources. A criminal investigation by the Hawks showed that ICT's application had included a fraudulent title deed document, which had been stolen from Kumba's application.

Steel company ArcelorMittal then announced it would buy ICT for R800-million as part of a bigger BEE deal.

The deal, which has now collapsed, would have seen Duduzane Zuma's company awarded shares worth R933-million and Mtshali pocketing R300-million in shares and an additional R67-million in cash.

Now Mtshali is facing another scandal in the controversial sanctions-busting deal, involving government support, exposed in today's Sunday Times.